Monthly Archives: September 2009

Up and Running

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I have been getting up early to run these past few mornings.  I love to do that.  The problem is that it is hard to get up early.  At least, it’s hard to get up early enough to be back in time to get all of us ready for work and school and whatnot.  I’m rising in the dark, and it is only going to get darker.  And then I’ll get all used to the darkness slowly shifting they’ll throw daylight savings at me.  I pretty much hate daylight savings.  Why can’t we just pick where the clocks will be?

Anyway, I’m getting up early.  I have to be all careful so I don’t wake the woman in the bed next to me who has tried so hard to sleep all night.  I have to be quiet as I walk down the hall and down the creeky stairs so I don’t wake the children.  I always step on some toy or bang into some chair left in an odd place.  I rarely get out without some loud crash or bump or screech.  But get out I do.

And when I do, the sun is working on the back side of Camel’s Hump and the sky glows and the low clouds are tinged with pink and the world is just beautiful.  It is hard not to enjoy it when the day starts off with its show.  Cloudy, rainy, clear, snowing, whatever, it is always beautiful.  If you can’t see it you need glasses or something.  Or you live in a place where you can’t see the world around you.  Because the world is just plain old stunning as the sun rises and the wind shakes the dew from the turning leaves and the spider webs grace the goldenrod.  I may be tired but it is so worth it.

Tomorrow morning I will try to rise again, even earlier.  The farther I want to go the earlier I need to rise.  So once I really get to the high mileage I need to get up way early.  But I’m just doing the shorties now–one to five miles–just to get out there and feel the morning and to get moving.  Sure, I’ll train for something sooner or later, and sure, I’ll run later in the day at times, but I need to remember, when I am bleary eyed and tuckered, that the early morning will give me a shot better than any espresso.

My shoes get wet as I walk across the dew-covered grass.  A late bat swoops over the field.  The asters quake in the breeze.  And the smell of fallen leaves mingles with a far off skunk and damp earth.  It makes one appreciate being alive.

Lost Entry

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I made an entry last night while I was connected wirelessly to my ipod touch.  It disappeared.  It took a long time to write anything of significance on that thing, one finger at a time.  But it disappeared into the ether.  Too bad, it was super important.  And insightful.  And quotable.  That is what I was writing about, being quoted.  I guess that won’t happen now.  Whatever.  The ether can have it.  The world is fleeting and all that.  I can add a powerful and emotion laden entry any old time.  And I’ll do it, too.

Old T-Shirts

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This Shirt is Long Gone

This Shirt is Long Gone

How many T-shirts does one person need?  That is the question that has bounced around my little pea of a brain many times.  The thing is, I have a lot of them T-shirts, not brains).  Occasionally, I weed through them and get rid of a few.  I turn them into rags if they are in really bad shape.  I give them away if they are in really good shape.  I sold one on eBay–a 1986 Dartmouth College Winter Carnival shirt with a Where the Wild Things Are theme in egg yolk yellow–that I had been hauling around for years.  I got 14 bucks for it.

I have too many T-shirts right now.  The problem is, they aren’t just random T-shirts.  I got them from all kinds of moments in my life–running marathons, working at outdoor education centers, time with friends, you know what I’m talking about.  Each T-shirt has a story.  I have one red T-shirt from the Atlanta Olympic games, 1996.  I was working at the University of Vermont and the woman whose desk was next to mine was wearing it.  I really liked it so I said to her:  ” I really like that shirt.  Can I have it?”  She said she wouldn’t just give it to me but would trade it for the one I was wearing (aqua, with a person jumping for a trapeze in the woods).  We both took off our shirts right then (I definitely got the better deal there) and I had a new shirt.

It is hard to give up a shirt with a story like that.  What about the high school program I did as a junior?  I still have the shirt, a one of a kind long sleever, but it is mighty tattered.  I keep it, rarely wear it, and decide to keep it again each time I rummage through the pile.  I have shirts that are over 20 years old.  That just seems silly.  I managed to get by just fine twenty years ago without twenty year old shirts, so why do I hang onto these?  Good question.

Nostalgia, that’s why.  I don’t need them all.  I mean, I have a whole drawer full of T-shirts.  So again the question:  How many T-shirts does one person need?  I know there isn’t really an answer to that question; at least, there isn’t only one answer.  But I think I may be ready to pare at this point.  I need to come up with a number so I can make some hard decisions.  I want some to wear around.  They are good summer wear, after all.  They aren’t all 20 years old, so keeping the newer ones seems to make sense.  I also sleep in them sometimes.  And I want some to wearing painting or weeding the garden or even just going for a hike.

Five clean ones and five for messing about?  That sounds good.  But I may have some trouble ditching the memory garb.  Maybe I can try for ten and give myself a maximum of twenty.  That might work.  Maybe I would end up with fifteen.  Last night I wore a marathon shirt from 1998 to bed.  I love that shirt.  Maybe I’ll keep that one.  And get rid of the marathon shirt from 2002.  I have two of those.  And I might be able to sell that Olympic one on eBay, but I like that one.

I don’t miss the Where the Wild Things Are shirt.  I can’t imagine that, once they are gone, I will miss any of the others.  But crap, kids, this could take a while.

Birthday and Photos

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One Fine Afternoon to be Outside

One Fine Afternoon to be Outside

I recently turned 40.  Up until this birthday I didn’t think all that much about what each birthday milestone meant.  Sure I had more rights and responsibilities at 18 but I was more concerned with smooching than with the off chance I might get called to war.  This one, however, has got me thinking, reflecting, really, on what has been and what may be to come.

My parents visited this past weekend.  They brought, quite literally, hundreds of photos.  I had asked my dad to bust them out for a project I had hoped to work on.  We have plans to get together as a somewhat extended family this fall.  Since I have a sister in the west coast and there are five of us siblings, we don’t all hang in the same place all that often.  So our plans to get together are significant.

My idea was to put together a slide show for the gang.  It would include photos from the past 45 years or so.  My parents were married in 1965 so I thought that might be a good place to start.  A lot of photographs can accumulate in 45 years, however.  So it took a few hours just to sort though the boxes of prints.  And we didn’t even get to the slides.  There are a lot more slides than prints.

So the big marker birthday, accompanied by all the photo browsing, has made this Gen X-er think about things a bit.  I know this is the time, traditionally, to enter the mid-life crisis phase, but I have been working to avoid that for a while.  Life is good.  I could ask for little more (although, let’s face it, I do).  Mostly I have just been thinking about my life.  Why not?  It seems a good enough time to do that.

On an afternoon run today I thought more than I would have liked.  I like to get out there and drain away all those pesky thoughts.  I guess I haven’t been getting out there enough.  I need to start getting up early and tying on the old shoes.  I’d like to get another ultramarathon in before I need a hip replacement.  Or new teeth.  Running with dentures might be a nuisance.

Jupiter rises and the children are asleep.  The dishes are washed and, while the laundry awaits folding, I am enjoying the quiet of my home while my wife is out with friends.  I just stashed a bucket of tomato soup, freshly made, in the freezer.  The rolls I made for dinner are wrapped for lunch tomorrow.  Like I said, life is good.  Here’s to forty more good ones.

Smoke News

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My wife surprised me and took me out to dinner this evening.  She got someone to watch the kids, got all gussied up to look more beautiful than she usually does (which pretty much makes me get all weak-kneed on a normal day) and we headed over the hill to the Bearded Frog in Shelburne.  They have good food at that particular establishment.  The last time we ate there I had to try three times to make something resembling the melt-in-you-mouth squash soup we tasted.  My soup was good but it wasn’t as good.

We sat in the corner, all cozy and romantic, only you can’t really have a cozy and romantic dinner when you are bound to run into somebody you know.  One of our neighbors and her daughter, visiting from New Jersey, sat at the table next to ours once things got hopping.  We chatted, of course, as was polite, and genuinely interesting in this case.  And fun.  We shared some laughter and the people at the next table over got into the conversation and it was generally a good time.

But the point here is that our neighbor is the one who owns the property where the smoke has been coming from (see yesterday’s post).  It was still smoking when we left the house for our sans children event.  It turns out she was away, came home about 5:00 to see the tower of smoke rising near the house.  She could tell right away it wasn’t the house (her first fear) and thought it might be the barn (fear number two).  Fortunately it was just a pile of hay.  It was a big pile of hay, combusted by the heat of the day.  Some folks pushed it around to make sure nothing else would catch, and smothered it as much as they could.  But a fat old chunk of hay is going to burn until it wants to burn no more.

The house still smelled of smoke when we got home, but it obviously was starting to burn itself out.  So no one hurt, nothing lost but a good deal of hay, and a mystery solved for sure.  The sky is still a little hazy but at least we understand more clearly.  That’s something.

Holy Smoke

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Still Smoking, 24 Hours Later

Still Smoking, 24 Hours Later

Last night as we sat on the deck and ate fresh wraps for dinner (delicious=mayo+pesto+just picked tomatoes+cucumbers+lettuce still warm from the sun+arugula+Shelburne Farms smoked cheddar) I looked up and reacted to what I saw with “Holy smoke!” What I saw was a big cloud of smoke.  We all turned and looked at it together and wondered, What’s that all about?

It smelled like burning wood and the smoke was white.  A house fire means black smoke and nasty smells, not to mention lots of sirens, and vehicles zooming about.  So I figured it was some big brush pile or a bonfire.  But it kept burning.  Long after dark it glowed, and the sound of back up beeps chorused with the crickets and cicadas.  Even when I woke in the wee hours the smell of smoke drifted through the house.  It was still going.

This morning we could still smell it.  When I drove up over O’Neil Road this morning I could look down and see the white plume.  I was gone all day but when I returned it was still smoking.  So what the hell?  It was clearly not out of control but who could be burning something this long?  And why?

My wife went for a run on a route that would take her past the mysterious smoldering.  When she returned her report was this:  It was a huge pile of hay, smoking away.  It may have caught fire spontaneously in the sun.  It may have been triggered accidentally.  In any case, the pile was big and the smoldering was going to continue.

It still makes everything smell smoky.  The sky, before the sun set, was dimmed where the smoke drifted.  And it keeps on.  It seems to be contained.  I hope it is.  It seems a loss of good hay and hopefully that is all that is lost.  Smoke in the air did provide an aura of autumn for a while.  Now, however, it is starting to seem plain old stinky.  We are on track for some showers tomorrow.  Maybe that will muffle the fire.  Just in time for the really chilly nights.

Pics From Space and a Cool Beetle

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New images were just released from the Hubble telescope, the first since the spring, when some repairs were made.  You can read a New York Times article here to learn more.  Here is one of the images:

Abell 370 Galaxy Cluster

Abell 370 Galaxy Cluster

Look up into the night sky (if you live in a place that isn’t so flooded with light that you can’t see the night sky) and you can see more stars than you can count.  On a clear night, even here so close to so many lights, I can see the Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon.  I get, well, starstruck sometimes.  But this photo isn’t of stars, it is of galaxies.  There are too many galaxies to count.  And each one of them contains countless stars.  And eac star is too big to truly comprehend.  It can make one dizzy.

Jupiter is just visible as I write this, rising in the east.  It has been hanging around our skies for many nights lately.  If I could see over the hill to the west I might have seen Saturn or even Mercury just after the sun set.  Dang hill.

The world itself, this planet Earth of ours, is too vast to grasp.  I can’t really fathom 6 1/2 billion people, or the depth of the ocean, or the dryness of the Gobi Desert, or camels.  And look at that picture.  How many worlds are there just within its frame?  How can there not be life out there somewhere? The odds are with us on that one.  It seems almost impossible that there wouldn’t be life beyond Earth.

I saw a beetle today I had never seen before–yellow and black and green with stripes.  Check it out:

Cool Beetle

Cool Beetle

Isn’t that amazing enough?  And the milkweed on which it sits–isn’t there discovery in the shape and color and structure of those leaves?  Countless immense galaxies and tiny new beetles to be gazed upon.  I’ve got more than enough wonder for many lifetimes.

New Camera

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I got a new camera, finally, today.  I ordered it on August 22nd from Amazon.  If I signed up for some service I did not want, they would have shipped it within two days.  That free shipping apparently comes with a price now.  It arrived by UPS while I was off working and I found it on the porch when I got home.  Unfortunately I had no time to really check it out.  I opened it and took a photo and set it back on the counter.  Then I worked for a while more before picking my daughter up from school, taking her to the dentist, and then picking up my son.  Then we had dinner to make and dishes to wash and now it just about bed time.  I’ll get to the experimenting soon.

In the meantime here is the photo I snapped this afternoon:

max Zoom with the New Camera

Max Zoom with the New Camera

Compare this to a photo I took this afternoon with the old camera:

Max Zoom with the Old Camera

Max Zoom with the Old Camera

The color isn’t the same since I took the photos several hours apart.  But you can get a sense of the quality of the photo as well as the ability to capture things far away.  I look forward to playing some more.

Purple Loosestrife

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Purple Loosestrife (Caroline Savage, Saint Lawrence Centre)

Purple Loosestrife (Caroline Savage, Saint Lawrence Centre)

I noticed it two years ago.  The showy purple flowers, standing tall like spears amongst the cattails.  I knew what it was and thought, “I should get rid of that stuff.”  I pulled some of it, in the ditch next to the road, but the plants deep in the wet part of the field I just left.  Next year I would get it.

By this year it was well established.  It has really spread from the few plants I saw two years ago.  A few weeks ago I pulled some of it.  I tried to get all of it at one end of the field, where there were only a few plants.  I dug up a few more in the broad field and along the road.  Then I put it off.  That stuff is hard to pull out of the ground.  I got out there today and had some work to do.

Purple Loosestrife was brought to North America in the 19th century as a source for medicines and through ship balast.  It was further introduced when it was brought to gardens as a perennial flower.  Canals and roads helped it spread.  It is beautiful.  The flowers are tall and colorful and shine in the sun.  But it is also trouble.  The plant likes wet areas and can take over, outcompeting native plants and clogging the place right up.  It spreads underground, roots sprouting new stalks, and it also produces zillions of tiny seeds.  I had to take action.

Let me say right off that I did not get the job done.  I pulled some up by the roots, prying with a fork, but most of it I just clipped with pruning shears.  I would have preferred to yank it out but there is too much at this point.  I needed to at least get the flowers out so they don’t go to seed.  I clipped and dragged and pulled and piled for a while.  I got cut up and sweaty and tired and had three huge piles of stalks.  When I looked back, I could see that it at least was contained a little more.  I had kept it from spreading, a little.  If I can get out there again this week, the field will be better off.  If I can at least cut it all, I will have a head start next summer.

There is no way it is going away any time soon.  Even if I were to dig up all of it, it would likely come back sooner or later.  It is tenacious and voracious.  And we have a great spot for it.  I may be pulling it for as long as we live here.  Apparently one can use herbicides to control it.  I say no thanks to that.  And there are some insects that might snack on it, but I hesitate to take that route. One invasive species is enough.  If I can scale the plant back every year, there is a chance I might get rid of it eventually.  It will take some time, however, and a lot of work.  For our field to stay healthy, however, it needs to be done.  And ain’t nobody else taking on that task.

Balloon Rally

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We had planned to be there between 5:00 and 6:00, when the balloons were schedule for a mass launch.  Thirty or so was the count.  That’s a lot of hot air balloons.  We got word, however, that the launch was cancelled.  Then we planned to get there a little later.  All those balloons were scheduled to be lit up at once at 8:00.  That would be a site.

Since this was all happening at Shelburne Museum, which isn’t all that far from our house, we weren’t worried.  When we got there a few balloons were lifting up after all, leaving a little later since the wind had abated.  The “glow” was postponed until the next evening, however.  Oh well.  We stuck around and watched a couple of balloons lift off.  We all got a kick out of that.

After the last one was up and away, the children colored pictures of hot air balloons.  We met up with several friends at this very popular event.  And we were home in time for bed.  The event continues today.  We plan to head over there at some point.  Meanwhile, here are some photos of one of the balloons we saw yesterday:

Filling...

Filling...

Filling More...

Filling More...

Almost Ready...

Almost Ready...

Up and Away

Up and Away

Higher...

Higher...

And Higher...

And Higher...

Buh Bye

Buh Bye